Time Machine for Microsoft SQL Server in docker

SolutionSoft Systems, Inc. has released the docker image to enable time travel in the Linux based container for Microsoft SQL Server. You can pull the prebuilt docker image from docker hub.

Introduction

This docker image is constructed on top of the Microsoft SQL Server for linux image. Two additional running programs are included:

1. tmlicd, the license service daemon which communicates with the SolutionSoft Floating License Server, and
2. tmagent, the Time Machine agent which allows virtual clock manipulation from remote, using tools such as Time Machine Console, and Sync Server.

We use the process supervisor s6 to manage all these running programs, including the Microsoft SQL Server.

In constructing this image, we made the decision to run Microsoft SQL Server as the user msadmin. By default, user msadmin has the UID 1000 and GID 0. One can easily change the UID and GID values for user msadmin through the environment variables MSADMIN_UID and MSADMIN_GID.

To enable Time Machine functions, one need to inform the container the parameters of the floating license server. These parameters are:

1. License server IP address;
2. License server listening port; and
3. License server token.

All these parameters can be defined by the environment variables TM_LICHOST, TM_LICPORT and TM_LICPASS.

Example

The following is a sample docker compose YML file for running the container:

version: "3"
services:
  db:
    image: solutionsoft/time-machine-for-mssql:latest
    restart: always
    environment:
      MSADMIN_USER: "1000"
      MSADMIN_GROUP: "0"
      SA_PASSWORD: "yourStrong(!)Password"
      MSSQL_PID: "Express"
      TM_LICHOST: "192.168.20.40"
      TM_LICPORT: "57777"
      TM_LICPASS: "docker"
    ports:
      - "17800:7800"
      - "1433:1433"
    volumes:
      - "./tmdata:/tmdata"
      - "./mssql:/var/opt/mssql"

The UID to run Microsoft SQL Server is set to be 1000. The floating license server IP is 192.168.20.40, listening port is 57777 and the passcode/token is docker.

Time Machine agent will listen to port 7800. In this eample, this port is mapped to port 17800 and SQL Server port 1433 is mapped to 1433 in the host machine.

For dertails, please refer to the github repo at: https://github.com/solution-soft/time-machine-for-mssql.